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As I look out of the window of my office at Somerset House, I can see the Fashion Week tent dominating the courtyard. This temporary structure combines fashion’s ephemeral nature with a steely efficiency…

Several members of the cast of the film The Monuments Men made headlines for expressing the view that the British Museum should return the Elgin Marbles to Athens after their “very nice stay” of 200 years…

Anniversaries encourage reflection. Now, 100 years after the start of the Great War, anyone who follows current affairs or reads a newspaper is part of a cultural conversation, a widespread reassessment…

The media frenzy recently aroused by the “racist chair”, as it has been dubbed, took off in a way that could only have been possible in a digital age. Once the infamous photograph – of wealthy gallerist…

The hacks and flacks of old in Frith’s ‘A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881’
Wikimedia CommonsFebruary 4, 2014

Public relations and arts journalism are inextricable. And so, unlike in other areas of the media, the influence that PR has on the arts sections of newspapers and magazines is not so contentious. But…

Pinning down definitions of the words “culture” and “arts” has always been notoriously difficult. But over the past 60 years, fast and profound social, economic, technological and cultural changes have…

It’s that season, and the award shows have begun, culminating for many in the Oscars. There are, as always, heavy favourites, films nominated numerous times, shows, musicians and actors. But one has to…

As a professional book designer, I’ve spent a decade observing electronic books from a cagey distance. A couple of years ago, I reluctantly recognised the need to engage with these alien book forms, both…

Let’s be honest: the sofa’s often better than the cinema.
AAP/HBONovember 7, 2013

The northern summer of 2013 was a bad one for Hollywood. After Earth, The Lone Ranger, White House Down, World War Z and Pacific Rim were among the million-dollar turkeys. And you may have noticed the…

An unprecedented 22% of Australians have declared themselves to be of “no religion”.
JetumaNovember 6, 2013

Recently the Prime Minister called upon the Labor Party to “repent” of its introduction of the carbon tax. His comments were ridiculed by some critics, not for the substance of what he said, but for the…

Fifty years ago, the notion of Australian fashion may have been regarded as an oxymoron. This is not a critique of Australians’ capacity to be intrinsically stylish, as there is plenty of evidence to reflect…

Last year the Australian Bureau of Statistics did the maths – government spends about A$7 billion annually in Australia on arts and culture. The exact dollar figure varies depending on what we count, but…

Architects such as Glenn Murcutt tailor their designs to the Australian landscape.
Anthony Browell/AAP ImageOctober 31, 2013

The Sydney Opera House celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. This Australian icon was, of course, designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, as a result of an international design competition held at…

With the right policy levers, Australia’s next big boom could be creative by design.
Sebastiaan ter BurgOctober 30, 2013

Australia is richly blessed with an abundance of resources which, along with robust legal, business and political infrastructure, has allowed it to pull through tough times on several occasions. As we…

Of course, there is no singular Indigenous Australia.
Angelo Soulas/AAPOctober 29, 2013

What is Indigenous Australia in 2013? To begin to answer this question, I believe it is important to proceed with a few key caveats: 1) There is no singular Indigenous Australia. Thus, anything written…

Creativity is the X factor of modern industry. When it slumps, our economy splutters. Creativity is the source of the unprecedented wealth of the last two centuries. Yet we still understand very little…

Australia does not lack art, artists or audiences, but …
October 27, 2013

Why doesn’t Australia get culture? What is it about culture that defeats our perception to the point where, like an unwelcome magic trick, it vanishes as an object of collective concern? For a country…